How to Adopt Healthier Lifestyle?

Fitness – More than fad diets!

Weight management is a great concern for many. People want to lose weight and want to lose it fast. To accomplish this they adopt myriad strategies like dieting, exercise, herbal drinks, fad diets.. the list is endless. But how long do these efforts continue? And even if they manage to lose weight, do the kilos stay off once the efforts are stalled?

Fad diets are not a long term solution for ideal health. No matter how much of hype has been created around fad diets, these will do anything but good to your body. Flip through web, health magazines or television these are sure to grab your attention as they come with false pretexts of helping you lose several kilos sometimes in less than a week or so. Regardless of how tempting they appear these will only prove catastrophic in the long run. The best approach is adopting a healthier lifestyle with small changes with respect to diet, physical activity made gradually over a period of time so these become hardwired in our brain.

A balanced diet has an adequate amount of fats, proteins and carbohydrates along with a variety of other nutrients that our body requires. When we stick to fad diets we eliminate a certain set of nutrients that our otherwise important to our body’s maintenance. If continued for long these diets manifest a host of illnesses in the person following them. Hair loss and altered metabolism almost always exhibit while a person is following these. Low carbohydrate diets can be high in fats and lead to bad breath, headaches, constipation, nausea, fatigue, dehydration and ketosis. High protein content of such diets suppresses the appetite and may lead to kidney stones and gout. Again the high fat content can wreak havoc on our blood lipid profile.

What then encompasses a healthier lifestyle?

Portion Control – Fast food restaurants aren’t the only places serving super-sized meals. Even at home meal portions are bigger than usual. Hence it is imperative that we exercise portion control and limit our second helpings.

Eat a variety of foods – Include protein, carbohydrates, and good fats like omega – 3’s on a regular basis in your diets.

Limit Trans fats of the type you get in pizza, deep fried snacks and Saturated fats of the type you get from butter, full cream milk etc. Opt for toned milk and low fat substitutes.